1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus which forms a transparent toner coat layer on a recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electrophotographic image forming apparatus can form a high quality image with good reproducibility and inexpensively, and is therefore widely used as a copying machine, a printer, a facsimile apparatus and the like. The electrophotographic image forming apparatus comprises, for example, a photoreceptor, a charging device, an exposure device, a developing device, a transfer device and a fixing device, and forms an image by fixing a toner to a recording medium such as a printing paper.
Photoreactive toner as described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publications JP-A 2007-233101, JP-A 2008-3240 and JP-A 8-106172 (1996) is known as one of toners used in the electrophotographic image forming apparatus. The photoreactive toner is a toner that can develop multiple different colors by being irradiated with light having a given wavelength. Where such a photoreactive toner is used in the electrophotographic image forming apparatus, a full color image can be formed by one kind of a toner.
To form a high quality image in an electrophotographic image forming apparatus, a technique of improving smoothness of a whole printing paper is known. The image forming apparatus described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication JP-A 2002-341623 forms a color toner image on an image area as well as fixing a colorless and transparent toner to a non-image area in order to improve smoothness of the whole printing paper.
In recent years, improvement in storage stability of an image formed on a printing paper and the like is desired in response to high definition of an image formed by an electrophotographic image forming apparatus. However, it is not easy to improve storage stability of an image by improving properties of a toner.